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Watching Grace test the Taumoeba cultures is usually boring. Rocky can’t help with it, and even though he can see the physical motions, it’s a lot of watching Grace stare into tubes (micro-scopes) and hum in either a positive or negative human tone.
It is very important, though. Today, Rocky is not bored, because growing more Taumoeba is vital to Grace’s continued survival, now more than ever. Today, Rocky is worried.
It has been two Earth months since Grace has described his food as his ‘last proper meal,’ and it is starting to show. His body makes more noises, and it is shrinking slightly, getting tighter to his skeletal structure. Even though Grace has been eating, his food has not been keeping him healthy.
They are running low on Taumoeba, now. Enough for both Rocky and Grace to be worried (while pretending not to be worried).
Grace loses balance. Grace gets dizzy. Grace’s head hurts.
Grace eats, but does not get better.
Grace pushes himself back from the micro-scope, a movement he has done many many times before without any problems. This time, though, his clumsiness makes him fall back.
Generally, Grace is okay at catching himself. Most of the time he tries to pretend he didn’t trip, or simply yells “I’m fine!” after he straightens up.
Grace doesn’t catch himself. He falls, and his body hits the ground, and Rocky hears horrible, terrible snaps.
Grace’s body is not supposed to make those noises. They are breaking noises.
Hurriedly pushing against the xenonite, Rocky rolls his sphere over next to Grace. His limbs dart around, unable to touch, to help, but needing to do something. “Grace? Awake, question? Grace hurt?”
He knows the answer to that. It’s not really a question.
“Yep,” Grace says, but his voice is strained and pained, “I’m–doing just peachy.” He doesn’t move from his spot, one hand cupped over his…hip, Rocky thinks is the word Grace used (in his defense, the anatomy lessons were not important ones when they were establishing communication, even if it was easy to point at a body part and name it). “Frankenstein fudge, that hurts.”
Fudge is both a swear and a food. Peachy is a food and a saying. Rocky knows this, but none of it helps. “How help? How fix?” Before continuing, Rocky answers his own question. “Pain medication, now. Armando. Grace go.” He rolls away slightly, giving Grace room to move his very long limbs.
“Gimme a second, buddy,” Grace says, and his breathing sounds wrong wrong wrong. Too short and quick, fast hissing and stuttered puffs. “Think I broke something–well, I almost certainly did, I don’t know about you but I definitely heard that crack and my hip hurts like my finger did that one time I broke it as a kid–” he shifts and the words are cut off into another hiss. “Ow, okay.”
“Rocky heard,” he confirms, shifting from limb to limb in his xenonite cage, the one that stops him from helping Grace. “Broke internal structure, question? Grace has no carapace.” That will be a lot harder to patch up. At least Grace isn’t leaking anything, though- he doesn’t have the fluids to spare.
Grace makes a ‘hum’ noise, one that doesn’t have a particular meaning (though there are hums that do have meaning). “All the cracking stuff is inside the body, yeah. Hip bone. Okay.” He makes a few quick blowing sounds of air, something Rocky is pretty sure means that Grace is ‘hyping himself up.’
No, no no. Rocky does not want Grace hyping up. That means he is about to do something.
Sure enough, Grace moves suddenly, rolling his body over with a loud pain-noise until his underside is against the floor, limbs gathered underneath him. “Ow, ow, ow,” Grace says. “Right. Armando. Pain meds.”
His forelimbs shake when he pushes himself up with them.
“Armando fix Grace,” Rocky adds, hoping it’s true and possible. This is not something Rocky can fix.
“He’ll have something, at least. I think. Morphine, if I’m lucky.” Grace’s front limbs move forward, one at a time. The back come next, Rocky has seen Grace ‘crawl’ before, but the moment the injured side shifts, Grace freezes. Then Rocky can tell Grace is thinking, can see him shifting his weight to the injured side!
“No, no, no,” Rocky protests, rolling closer. “Hand on xenonite ball. Stay stable. No hurt self more.” If Grace keeps putting pressure on whatever is broken inside him, it might break more, squishier things.
Grace pauses, but does the ‘yes’ head nod. ‘I don’t know how well it’ll work, but…yeah. You’re right. Okay, come here.”
Rocky does the come here. He wishes he could really support Grace, properly, with his limbs instead of a cold metal ball.
One hand, then another, smacking onto the xenonite and probably leaving gross leaky marks on it, but Rocky doesn’t care. Grace is hurt. Grace needs help.
“Right,” Grace ‘mumbles’. “So, keep weight off my right leg. Like a tripod dog. I can do that, right? I can totally do that.”
“Grace will do that, statement.” Rocky does not know why a dog would be described as tripod, but there are more pressing occurrences to deal with. “Rolling now. Go slow.”
He tips the orb forward, xenonite clacking against the ground as it shifts over by one geometric face. Grace’s hands slip slightly, but don’t fall off, and a moment later the human pulls himself after Rocky. It is a short distance traveled, but a distance closer to Armando either way.
“Now.” Rocky shifts the sphere again, making sure to monitor Grace closely. He is dragging his leg behind slightly, which is likely not good for the injury, but they don’t have any other options, or at least, none Rocky can think of. He cannot carry Grace.
This feels like a failure.
The hardest parts are the lips between rooms. Grace trips over them normally, and now he has to lift his injured, weak body over them. They are not tall, but the height is difficult on Grace nonetheless, Rocky can tell. It’s worse when Grace slips once and hits his broken side on the metal, a high-pitched (for a human) noise coming from him as he curls up where he lies.
Rocky matches his sound of distress, then cuts his noise short. He can’t lose himself to pain he isn’t feeling, he has to stay sturdy, so Grace can lean on him. “Up, Grace up! Armando fix! Keep go!”
If Grace stops here, Rocky realizes, he will be stuck. Rocky cannot help him, cannot fix this. Rocky is trapped by pressure and atmosphere and if he crosses those boundaries they might both end up dead.
“Fudge,” Grace says. “Ow.” Still, he manages to–after far too much time, in Rocky’s opinion–push himself back up and over the lip. Together, they make it to the medical room, where Armando can pick Grace up and put him on a bed. Another way that Rocky cannot help, but the humans who built this ship made a fix for.
“Armando,” Rocky demands, “injury, question? How bad? How fix?” If the robot doesn’t know, then Rocky will have to- will-
There’s nothing he can do. The robot has to know, or Grace will be hurt forever. Maybe die.
“Patient detected,” says Mary, the voice of the ship. Armando doesn’t speak even though Mary does, so Armando uses Mary like Rocky uses Grace’s translator. “Scanning in progress.”
“It’s a broken bone, Mary,” Grace groans out. “Hip, I think. Not femur, thankfully.”
“Oblique fracture of the ilium detected,” Mary-Armando says.
“Is that part of the hip?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
Rocky does not thank Mary. None of this was good. Even if ‘not femur’ was supposed to be a good thing, this was ‘full bad.’ “How long it take to fix, question?”
“Surgery will take–”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Grace interrupts, moving as if to push himself up (Armando stops him, good). “Surgery? Can’t I just have a brace and call it good?”
“Dr. Grace’s x-rays reveal moderate osteoporosis. Surgery is necessary to ensure full recovery.”
Tilting up and down to simulate a human ‘nod,’ Rocky agrees. “Armando says surgery. Grace need surgery.” The human has historically lied about his health, and is certainly less trustworthy with it than Armando and Mary.
“Am I really that low on calcium?” Grace says quietly. Probably to himself. Grace talks a lot, but not always to someone. “Dang. Okay, yeah, sure. Surgery. As long as I don’t die during it, right, Mary?”
Rocky’s body shakes with distress for a moment, before he stills himself. “Grace will not die. Mary, if Grace die, no surgery. Understand?”
He doesn’t even have the time to ask about calcium. Probably another nutrient, if Grace is ‘low on’ it. He is ‘low on’ many nutrients, now. It can be a later question.
“Understood, Rocky. Chance of fully successful surgery, 82.64%. Shall I proceed?”
“Uh, don’t I get a say in this?” Grace asks, yet he doesn’t move. Good. “Eighty is good enough for me, honestly.”
But Rocky still doesn’t understand- eighty percent of what? Unacceptable. “Fully successful mean Grace fix? Mean Grace just like before? What is not fully successful? Grace die? Grace die?” Now that he’s voiced the thought, it just keeps bouncing around inside of him, trying to spill out.
“Chance of death, 1.78%.”
Rocky settles down on his limbs slightly. “Two of one hundred. Two of one hundred is less than space travel, question?” Better than Grace being broken forever. Technically.
“Unclear request. Please repeat.”
Focusing for a second, Rocky speaks more slowly, doing his best to add the connecting words that the alien language uses so many of. “Chance of death in surgery… less than… chance of death when be in space?”
This time, Grace answers him. “Statistically, yeah.” He starts making the limb movements he uses when explaining, which is good. “There’s a much higher chance of us dying from something breaking here than surgery. Hail Mary isn’t meant for long term travel, remember?”
Rocky does his best to keep his limbs still. Higher chance of dying isn’t something he likes to think about. Best to just keep going until something unfixable happens, instead of spending so much time knowing. “Remember.”
“Okay.” Grace turns to Armando. “What’s it gonna be, titanium plate?”
The conversation that follows is long and has a lot of words that Rocky doesn’t know, which is frustrating. Grace talks with Mary and Mary talks with Grace and at the end of it all Rocky is told to leave the room.
“Reason, question?” Rocky asks, words scraping together. He does not want to leave Grace. He isn’t quite sure, but surgery meant cutting into humans, right? That does not feel like an alone activity.
“Sterile environment, buddy,” Grace explains. “Remember how humans have a ton of microbiomes? Surgery means that there’s a risk something could infect the ones inside my body if we aren’t careful.”
That is… a good reason. Rocky chitters to himself in frustration, but he goes.
He watches the cameras instead.
It takes far too long for comfort, but nothing about being separated from a hurt, vulnerable Grace is comfortable. Rocky has Mary repeat her explanation again, and define the unknown human words for him.
Grace has broken one of the fused bones that holds structure for his limbs. The limbs that he uses to stand. Not good. There are many parts of the ship that require a standing human to reach or operate. Apparently this bone is one of three that are fused to make up the ‘pelvis’, and the broken part is where the joint of his big leg bone connects to the pelvis.
Not only can he not stand, apparently even moving the limb is painful, since it makes one bone scrape against the other. Mary informs him that Grace will need to have his pelvis immobilized and rest for at least six human weeks with minimal movement to fully recover, but it could take longer because of how Grace is lacking so many nutrients.
That is many human weeks.
Rocky cannot reach everything needed to keep the ship running.
This could be fixed, with enough time and enough xenonite, but not in a way that would leave things accessible to Grace anymore. But Grace is immobilized, so Rocky will do the work.
Grace is immobilized, and Rocky will have to leave him.
There are no predators on the ship, aside from the bacterial ones. But Rocky just got a crew again, and he cannot leave Grace to rest alone.
But he has to.
After three human hours, Grace starts to shift.
“Eye movement detected,” Mary says. “What is two plus two?”
“Please stop asking me that,” Grace groans, voice scratchy. “It’s four, Mary.”
“Correct. Welcome back, Dr. Grace. Your surgery was fully successful.”
Rocky lets out a celebratory hum. “Grace awake and aware, question?” He’s going to need his whole human ‘brain’ to follow the changes Rocky has started to make.
Shifting slightly, Grace turns to face Rocky. “Awake and aware, statement,” he replies. “How are you doing, Rock?”
“Rocky busy, fix ship.” He cannot fix Grace, but Rocky is an engineer. He’s got the experience necessary for that.
“Oh, shoot,” Grace says, pushing himself up onto his arms (“Please remain still,” Mary says). “What happened? Did something break?”
“No,” Rocky chides. “Grace dumb. No move. Listen. Rocky fix ship so Grace can rest, and Rocky pilot!” He tells Grace this a lot more harmoniously than he’s actually feeling about the idea of piloting an alien spacecraft, with his only help stuck in a different room.
“Oh,” Grace says again. “How, uh, how–how’d you do that, buddy?” His hand reaches up as if to move his ‘glasses’, except Grace isn’t wearing them and the limb drops again.
“Ramps. Rocky finish grab stick soon.” He’s been making one for the last human hour, a claw that can twist and be manipulated with internal strings of xenonite. Now, he just has to figure out how to attach it to something outside of his globe that he won’t roll on top of.
Grace ‘stares’ at Rocky for a few seconds, ‘mouth’ open (gross). “I can’t believe claw grabbers are universal across space,” he finally says nonsensically.
Well. Rocky has seen images of earth animals with ‘claw’ appendages, and they do look similar in function. “Close mouth. Wet noise echo,” he scolds, just to make things feel normal.
Grace ‘snorts’, one of his amusement sounds. “Right, gotcha,” he says before doing a strange, new movement where he moves one of his hands in front of his mouth, then twisting it and making a ‘throwing’ motion.
Is he… throwing the noises? He gestured away from Rocky. Weird human. But Rocky doesn’t need to understand mouth-throwing right now. How will he keep his grab stick up? It can’t be fixed to the globe. Wires attached to the top would fail, too, because the top of the globe does not stay the top. No, it needs to be unattached, but surrounding.
Then, he remembers the spools that he made for the chain. Spools. Wheels. Yes. Make a circle with grab stick, make globe more malleable like touch space, wheels on circle, globe push circle along on wheels–
“Hellooo? Earth to Rocky? Wait, nevermind, I locked my lips,” Grace says and goes quiet.
“Grace to Erid,” Rocky reminds. What is wrong with the human? Is this normal weirdness? “Mary. Grace okay, question?”
“All vital signs within expected parameters,” Mary answers.
All is everything, vitals is how Grace’s body functions are measured. Vitals are all something. Given that Grace seems okay physically, and Mary doesn’t keep going, this probably means all vitals are okay. So, this is just normal weirdness.
Unlike Grace’s normal weirdness, he doesn’t say anything else.
Hm. When Grace spoke, he said nevermind, because he locked…
Hm. Lips means romance movie mouth. Rocky understands locked. Is Grace saying he is unwilling to romance someone? Why would this make him silent?
But it didn’t make him silent. Grace made himself silent. So perhaps this is a joke?
“Armando no do lips surgery,” Rocky says, ready to be exasperated at any moment. “Grace is not locked.”
Grace makes meaningless noise with his closed mouth. It’s similar to the ‘humming’ of songs that Rocky is more familiar with, but without any of the indicators of music.
“Sound horrible,” Rocky tells him. “Make Armando fix mouth, question?” He’s almost completely sure this is a choice Grace is making. “Armando have many sharp thing plural. Can open.”
The next ‘hum’ Grace makes is one that does have meaning: it’s a negative, denial sound. The human reaches to the side and grabs…nothing, then brings his hand to his mouth again, twists, and slides across. “Just had to unlock it,” Grace says. “See? All good.” He opens his mouth disgustingly wide.
“Gross,” Rocky chides, skittering away. “Mouth gross. Grace gross. Grace weird.”
“Rocky weird,” Grace replies, but he does close his mouth between speaking times. “How about you tell me about the modifications you made?”
Humming in approval, Rocky navigates his orb to the ‘foot’ of Grace’s resting platform. “Cannot put more tunnels. If more tunnels, then Grace stuck with no controls. Can make ramps.” He mimics a human ‘nod’ again. “Grace will reach over or under ramp plural. Rocky will go on ramp plural. Both can use ship.”
Grace also ‘nods’ “That’s–” his mouth opens again, but he brings one hand up to ‘cover’ it in a way that Rocky knows means this is a ‘yawn’, “–really smart, buddy. Maybe at some point we’ll be able to figure out a suit or something that’s more maneuverable than your ball, yeah?”
Rocky taps his appendages on the bottom of the globe in consideration. “Xenonite not bend well. Maybe.” He straightens his limbs, standing tall. “Ramps now. Suit later.” Rocky is technically in charge of the ship now.
Again.
“Could make it like your, uh, grabby panel,” Grace says, one of his hands pointing to the malleable barrier on Rocky’s ball. “Wrap around you like my EVA suit.”
“Full body suit, question?” That sounds… inconvenient. Rocky’s limbs are much more maneuverable than human ones, it would restrict his mobility.
“Mhm,” Grace affirms. “Give it joints like your ship’s outside arm-robot. Can’t be worse than the ball, right? More maneuverable at least.”
Half-mimicking Grace’s ‘hum,’ Rocky considers. Joints. Yes. “Rocky can build.”
“‘Course you can,” Grace mumbles. It’s not Grace’s allotted sleep time, but Rocky can tell by the slowing of his heart and lungs that Grace is soon to fall asleep either way. “You’re a good builder. Talented.”
It’s nice to hear. Even from someone who doesn’t understand his field, and might be more impressed than is actually reasonable. “Grace good scientist.” Good friend.
A quiet huff. “Eh, there’s better people out there. I was just the last choice, you know? Didn’t even…” he trails off, though Rocky can tell he isn’t asleep yet.
Hm. Sadness.
“Rocky’s first choice,” he tells Grace firmly. He doesn’t think Grace will accept it, but it’s important that Rocky tries.
“Only choice, more like,” Grace corrects, always mean to himself. “Glad you’re here with me, though. Good to not be alone.”
Rocky wasn’t always bothered by being alone. Now, he is. He knows why, but that doesn’t make Grace’s presence any less good. “Can’t get rid of me,” he jokes, remembering a human phrase Grace had used.
It makes Grace laugh. “Not even if I tried,” he agrees, finishing the phrase. Then he sighs. “I might sleep for a bit, Rock. The anesthetic really took a lot out of me.”
It was something put into him, but human phrases are odd. “I will watch. Grace is safe, statement.”
“Yeah, I know, buddy. I’m safe as long as you’re watching.”
It is true. And Rocky will make sure it keeps being true.
For as long as he is watching.